of those men you were so delighted with, has such glaring faults, as make them all unfit to be thought of in any other light than that of contributing to our diversion. They are not to be trusted, nor depended on in any point in life; and although they have such parts and sense, that I cannot help liking their company, I am forced, when I reflect, to think of them just as I do of a buffoon, who diverts me, without engaging either my love or esteem. Perhaps you may blame me, when I have told you their real characters, for having anything to say to them; but as I consider I have not the power of creation, I must take men as they are; and a man must be miserable who cannot bring himself to enjoy all the pleasures he can innocently attain, without examining too nicely into the delicacy of them. That man who sat next to you, and to whom I was not at all surprised to see you hearken with so much attention, notwithstanding all those beautiful thoughts of his on covetousness, and the eloquence in which he displayed its contemptibleness, is so great a miser, that he would let the greatest friend suffer the height of misery rather than part with anything to relieve him: and was it possible to raise, by any means, compassion enough in him to extort the least trifle, the person who once had a farthing of his money would be ever afterwards hateful to him. For men of his turn of mind take as great an aversion to those people whom they think themselves, or, to speak more properly, their chests a penny the poorer for, as children do to the surgeons who have drawn away any of their blood.
"That other gentleman, who seemed to pitch on extravagance as the properest subject to harangue against, is himself the most extravagant of all mortals; he values not how he gets money, so that he can but spend it; and notwithstanding
